{"id":37280,"date":"2025-01-15T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37280"},"modified":"2025-01-15T22:07:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T04:07:45","slug":"michelle-obama-signals-shes-done-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37280","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Obama signals she\u2019s done with Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Michelle Obama\u2002<\/u><\/a>is done with President-elect Trump, if her decision to skip next week\u2019s inauguration means anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former first lady, who once called on Democrats to go high when Trump\u2019s Republican Party goes low, will not be going to the Capitol to watch Trump take the presidential oath for a second time, leaving her husband, former President Obama, to go it alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longtime allies of the former first lady say she is sending a powerful statement by skipping the event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They say she wants nothing to do with a man undeserving of the presidency and is making no effort to hide her disdain for Trump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe meant every word she said on the campaign trail with every fiber of her being,\u201d one ally said. \u201cAnd she\u2019s no hypocrite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By not attending the inauguration, Michelle Obama is \u201csaving some credibility,\u201d one longtime aide to her said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe campaigned the hardest against him personally, of anyone,\u201d the aide said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she will be the only former first lady not in attendance at Trump\u2019s inauguration, allies say that trend broke during the last inauguration, when Trump and former first lady Melania Trump did not attend President Biden\u2019s ceremony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd no one took issue with that,\u201d a second ally said. \u201cSo why is this a big deal? The chain has already been broken.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A statement from the Obamas\u2019 office would not say why the former first lady would not be attending the inauguration. It simply said the 44th president is \u201cconfirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies,\u201d while Michelle Obama \u201cwill not attend the upcoming inauguration.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision not to attend leaves her husband out to dry, or at least appears to after he was seen on camera laughing with Trump ahead of former President Carter\u2019s funeral last week. Michelle Obama, who would have been seated next to Trump, also skipped that event because of an apparent \u201cscheduling conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of Democrats weren\u2019t happy with former President Obama laughing with Trump, and some will like the sense that the first lady is giving a decidedly different and cooler signal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook, he can\u2019t stand the guy, but he knows how to turn it on and be cordial,\u201d the second ally said. \u201cHe was being polite at a funeral.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the second ally said, \u201cAnd I\u2019ll bet he got some s\u001e\u001e\u001e from [Michelle Obama] about it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked about the moment in a Fox News interview last week, Trump acknowledged it \u201cdid look very friendly. \u2026 I said, \u2018Boy, they look like two people that like each other.\u2019 And we probably do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Democratic National Convention last summer, the former first lady was relentless in her criticism of Trump. \u201cFor years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,\u201d she said. \u201cSee, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the campaign trail last year, Michelle Obama repeatedly slammed Trump\u2019s character and blasted him for having \u201cgross incompetence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn any other profession or arena, Trump\u2019s critical track record and amoral character would be embarrassing, shameful and disqualifying,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelle Obama is famously unhappy around politics. She routinely ranks as the most popular Democratic politician when surveys are done asking people whom they would like to see run for president. But after her husband ended his second term, she repeatedly made it clear that a run for office was not in the cards because she had absolutely no interest in doing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d she said in a 2018 interview on the \u201cToday\u201d show when asked<\/u><\/a> about a potential run. At the time, she was promoting her bestseller \u201cBecoming.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have never wanted to be a politician. It\u2019s one of those things that nothing has changed in me to make me want to run for elected office.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not attending Trump\u2019s inauguration, in some ways, feels consistent with that mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While both Obamas attended Trump\u2019s first inauguration in 2017, the former first lady has long shown animus toward Trump. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cBecoming,\u201d she slammed Trump for putting her family in danger after he falsely claimed former President Obama was born in Kenya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBut it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDonald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family\u2019s safety at risk,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd for this, I\u2019d never forgive him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Obama\u2002is done with President-elect Trump, if her decision to skip next week\u2019s inauguration means anything.  The former first lady, who once called on Democrats to go high when Trump\u2019s Republican Party goes low, will not be going to the Capitol to watch Trump take the presidential oath for a second time, leaving her husband, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[32029,2386,1230],"class_list":["post-37280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-michelle-obama","tag-relationship","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37282,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37280\/revisions\/37282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}